a surprisingly sweet sewing blog

Tag Archives: kids cloths week

The final project from KCW is some shorts for lil’ E, they are basically the same pattern I drafted for the racer shorts except they are sewn up as a regular pair of shorts. Admittingly they turned out a wee bit long, but E has been hungry every 12 minutes for about a week now so I’m sure there is a growth spurt on the way.

The fabric was gifted to me years ago, I totally forgot about it. The print is just perfect for E as he love love loves Batman!! (he still wears the Batman shirt we freezer stenciled 2 yrs ago on a weekly basis.) Its a interlock knit so fantastic to work with and extra comfortable for the active boy.

I did my favorite waistband on them, using a ribbed knit and draw string. If you look in my sewing frenzy the holes for the drawstring were put in the back of the waist lol. I’ll be replacing the string with elastic to correct that, it will make it easier for dressing with elastic anyway. The bottom hem has a bias taped finish. For the pocket I used the same purple ribbing, trimmed in bias tape to stabilize the stretchiness.

This is the last post of what was sewn up for KCW, both boys got a new shirt and new shorts, pretty good for just 1 hour a day at the machine. I do want to try to continue the dedication to sewing. I want to hit the machine for an hour a week over the summer. Not sure if it will happen but I’m going to try 🙂

One of the projects was racer shorts for Mr. K. the inspiration comes from Made, and Dana’s tutorial on new school takes on racer shorts form the 70’s. I had planned to whip up more than 1 pair of these….however one pair with this material was quite enough!

The material was a nightmare ! I picked it up in a discount bin, its a athlenctic type knit. Its such a shame really that it is a grumpy material to work with, because its a bright happy blue, really light weight and so it will be comfortable to wear Its the kind of knit that just skips stitches like crazy,

I stated with a zig-zag…no luck…and then went to my stretch stitches, well my thread kept breaking ! So I switched over to the serger. It was still a pain 😦 the overlock part was fine, but the main seam needle thread kept breaking. Ugg !

The saving grace on them was the bias tape that makes them a racer short. It totally stabilized the fabric so its the one part of the project that wasn’t at all frustrating. The detail it adds is nice, Mr. K got to choose the colour. And bonus not hemming 😀 I’m already looking at the fabric stash and trying to decide what to make into more bias tape so that I can make more racer shorts.

I will mention and let you all see the horror of the waistband, and what I tried there. E has a pair of swim trunks that have a boxer like waist with 3 seams all gathered. I attempted it even though I knew the fabric was horrid to sew (stubborn when I get a design idea i guess.) It looks pretty ruff !

Good news is they stay up on his trim waistline and he has been wearing them all week.

PS: just realized I forgot to say the pattern is self drafted from a pair of his shorts

I didn’t make time to blog about the projects I managed to finish during KCW, so I’ll try my best to roll them out quickly now that we have reached day 7. Starting with…….

Mis-Matched Reglan T’s

Some of you might be saying “what is mis-matching?” Its what I call it when you make outfits that go together but don’t totally match, by changing up the trim like here or having a theme fabric like these ones here and here. I absolutely love doing it and think it looks so cute ! (I will even admit it makes me smile when folding their laundry – weird I know.)

Following the KCW theme of travel, I pulled some jersey knit from the stash that has little cars on it. The accent fabric is up-cycled T’s, so I was able to utilize a few existing hems.

The pattern is Field Trip Cargo Pants and Reglan Shirt from Oliver and S. It was in size 18m-4T, so I did have to adjust it to fit my now larger boys (and realized how long I’ve been doing this sewing thing). The adjustments where easy ones just a 1\4 inch on the fold of the shirt pieces, and adding length to the bottom.

I had some major frustration with the neckline on the red shirt. The cute car fabric has minimal stretch for a knit, so even though the pattern piece had been adjusted for the added width, I didn’t compensate for the difference in stretch that ribbing would have had. I ripped the neckline out twice trying to get it to strech around evenly, then tried re-cutting a new piece. When that didn’t work I gave up on perfect. I ripped out a few inches the third time and cut the neckband to add what was needed. So there are 2 seams in the neckband and one of them is on the side not the back. Oh well embrace imperfection and move on because the boy wearing clearly loves it !

The sleeve length turned out good, I was going for a 3\4 but am happy with how they look on the boys sitting just at elbow length.

The best feature according to E is the pockets and what he can hold in them.

They had so much fun taking these photos. I usually have to bribe them and struggle. I guess it helps that they were aloud to climb all over their sisters truck 😛

Mr.K was full of ideas and came up with the Run DMC style pose 🙂 and lil’ E was all about what he could put in his pocket. There are so many cute photos from my usually camera shy boys I might just do a photo- shoot post.

PS: yes those are also new shorts from KCW more posts coming on those soon, and you can check out all the fun of KCW by clicking the button below

All of the sewing today (day 6) has been on a different project than the one I am chronicling here. I finished these last night, and am so pleased with the way they turned out. Can’t hardly believe I started them last summer, but that my friends is the truth. The poor project got tossed aside in moving frenzies. Forgotten. Until last week when I was combing through my fabric stash on day 2 of KCW. I got ridiculously excited I remembered them and crossed my fingers that they would still fit at least one of my boys.

The pattern is blank slate pants. Which is just an awesome pattern that everyone should have in their arsenal (more on that later.) It features some amazingly cute details that I never thought I could pull off. Such as welt pockets ! check them out !

Now, I use very little patterns in my sewing. Why you ask? Well I have bought traditional patterns for work scrubs and sweaters for myself in the past; long before this blog. And the results we often ill fitting (usually way to big then my attempt to fix them would make it weirder so I was basically wasting my time and $$) or there were instructions and pieces that I just couldn’t figure out. So I’d get all frustrated and give up 😛

Sewing blogs taught me how to copy cloths for my kids from their existing wardrobe. The results were sometimes odd but the material was free old t-shirts and the time spent was small. As my skills have increased I recently dived into patterns again but this time from trusted bloggers that have been teaching me over the past few years through their awesome tutorials. Blank Slate Patterns are fantastic ! Easy to follow picture instructions laid out just like a tutorial.

So I want to give a big shout out to Melissa from Melly Sews, Melissa is a madly talented seamstress and this pattern is great ! Lots of optional detail, and her fit charts are always my favorite. I can fit my lean boys easily in waist and length, totally customizable size wise.

I made a size 5 to fit my slim Mr. K in the waist and went with a 7 in the length for a board short look. I totally feel like a sewing rock star because I made ‘ welt pockets’ for the first time ! And how cute they look on this little guy’s shorts. The teen daughter was even impressed and said I should make a matching pair for lil’ E, which I may cuz i love matching them up.

I chose to do a mock fly with snap in place of a button. Brave enough for pockets but not for a zippered fly yet.

The length did work out ok even this a winter of growth spurting between the start and the finish. I do tend to cut things long by a few inches whenever I make something, and it worked to my advantage, even rolled they are an ok length. I do think they are so cute, the fabric is this crazy woven stuff I picked up with scrubs in mind. They checks give a nice subtle sophistication. We could almost pretend its suiting material.

some serious pouting going on

So far K hates these pants, he believes that it is to early for shorts. It took much convincing to get him to wear them for hem placement fitting. And almost a melt down to get him out in the april sunshine for a few photos. Hopefully he will like them by the end of may.